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As Saturday's practice wound down, Daniel Alfredsson took part in a different version of 'keep away' along one of the Bell Centre blue lines.

He stood in the middle as two teammates tried to pass a puck to each other without the captain getting his stick on it. They usually went high, forcing the 40-year old kid to jump and flail at the flying rubber. More often than not, he connected.

One of Alfredsson's playmates was goalie Craig Anderson, minus his mask and mitts. The way he was sending the passes back and forth with Erik Karlsson, Anderson might want to take a shot at an opponent's empty net sometime.

"I never have," Anderson said later. "But after today I think I might drop my glove and try to shoot without a glove ... I don't know if that's legal or not. I was shooting it pretty good without that lobster mitt on."

Scoring is about all Anderson hasn't done for the Senators in this still young season. When he makes his eighth start Sunday afternoon here against the Canadiens, it will be as the NHL's best starting goalie.

Along with the 5-1-1 record, the .99 GAA and the .968 save percentage comes this mind-boggling fact: All seven goals against him have been scored in the first period, which means he's been perfect in every second, third and the one overtime he has played.

That's more than 14 periods -- or the equivalent of almost five complete games -- of shutout hockey.

"It's just kind of the way the ball is bouncing right now," said Anderson. "Very easily, it could be the only goals they're scoring are in the third period. Who knows? It's just kind of the way the team is playing, the way we kind of settle down. We opened it up a little bit in the third (Friday night) and it could have gone either way. They could have two or three in the third and we wouldn't even be taking about this."

But that wasn't the case and everybody is starting to talk about this.

After back-to-back starts earlier this week and another one Friday, Anderson was having fun stoning teammates and batting pucks into the stands during Saturday's practice -- which was held about nine hours after the Senators arrived in Montreal.

Not tired, eh?

"I don't mind coming to the rink," he said of the early wakeup call. "It's the game we grew up playing, it's the game we grew up loving. I just think back to the days when we were eight, nine, 10 years old ... you'd have five games on a weekend. You'd be at the rink, then back at the hotel drying your gear and then back at the rink again.

"The game is still fun for us. We enjoy coming here. What else are we going to do here?"

In Montreal? Yeah, there's nothing going on.

What the Senators have to do is figure out how to generate some scoring chances against a Montreal team that was impressive in every aspect of its win over Buffalo Saturday.

"It's always the same cliches, every coach in the league talks about it," said Alfredsson. "If you're not scoring you've got to get people to the net. Get the puck to the front of the net as quick as you can and create havoc that way."

In Ottawa on Wednesday, the Habs took the lead and were playing the Senators tough until Ryan White's double minor, and the power play goals by Alfredsson and Mika Zibanejad that followed.

"They forechecked us real hard, so we expect they're going to do that again," said MacLean. "We have to find solutions for that sooner than we did in Ottawa. We expect them to come hard."

Anderson is ready to ease the pressure with his puckhandling, which he seems to be doing more than usual of late.

"I got a new stick this year, so maybe I'm trying to overuse it," he said. "Just seems right now that teams are taking away the 'D', it's allowing me a little more time to clear the puck. I feel I play the puck reasonably okay. I wouldn't say it's great, I wouldn't say it's poor. That could be one of the things that didn't get worked on at training camp this year, just because we didn't have time."

Anderson joked that he was kind of hoping to get a shot at the open net in Florida, with his team up by two goals and having just won a faceoff.

"I was kinda hoping they'd throw it back to me," he said. "(Scoring) would be kind of a nostalgic feeling, I think. It wouldn't be something I'd set as my goal or to play hockey for. There's other (goalies) who have done it and it would be kind of neat to be in that category, but I wouldn't be depressed or pissed off that I'd never had a goal.

Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson off to great start this season

MONTREAL — As Saturday's practice wound down, Daniel Alfredsson took part in a different version of 'keep away' along one of the Bell Centre blue lines.

He stood in the middle as two teammates tried to pass a puck to each other without the captain getting his stick on it. They usually went high, forcing the 40-year old kid to jump and flail at the flying rubber. More often than not, he connected.

One of Alfredsson's playmates was goalie Craig Anderson, minus his mask and mitts. The way he was sending the passes back and forth with Erik Karlsson, Anderson might want to take a shot at an opponent's empty net sometime.

"I never have," Anderson said later. "But after today I think I might drop my glove and try to shoot without a glove ... I don't know if that's legal or not. I was shooting it pretty good without that lobster mitt on."